Arts & Culture | Books

Is prayer a recitation of wish lists? Or regrets? A cry for help? What about gratitude? How does one achieve transcendence? Feel God’s presence? What about doubt? Can you pray if you don’t believe? How does prayer affect the supplicant?

When my niece got married recently, the first dance song played at her wedding reception was “Harvey and Sheila,” Allan Sherman’s parody of “Hava Nagilah.” We all danced in intertwining circles, as the band played “Harvey and Sheila/Moved to West L.A./They bought a house one day/Financed by FHA…”

As she watched her mother apply her make-up, Patricia Volk saw several views of her at once, through the three-way mirror. Audrey Morgen Volk, wearing a green velvet robe that matched the green drapes in her room, methodically applied layers of cream and powder and mascara. Patty knew that her mother was beautiful — this was noted frequently by the doormen of their Upper West Side building, cab drivers, the butcher, camp counselors and relatives — but only she knew that the make-up was “a portrait of her face on top of her face,” and that the face underneath was sheer beauty too.

Bethesda, Md. — Did Pope Pius XII, the leader of the Catholic Church during World War II and the subsequent decade, suppress a landmark Vatican document that his predecessor, Pius XI, had commissioned, a document that would have unambiguously criticized racism and anti-Semitism? And did that document — an encyclical, in Vatican parlance — actually exist?

When Alexander Stille’s mother died in 1993, she left few papers behind — just some letters, photographs and remnants of the lists she maintained to organize her life. Everything was in its proper place; her bills were paid and her will was signed.

Early on in Jodi Picoult’s new novel “The Storyteller” (Atria), Josef Weber comments that Sage Singer doesn’t say much in their grief support group, but when she does speak up, she’s a poet. She answers firmly that she’s no poet, but a baker.